Alien from the Deep

Not exactly Margheriti's shining moment on screen, but it's still loads better than a lot of his other mid-to-late 80's work like CODE NAME: WILDGEESE or INDIO thanks to some energetic editing and rich special effects. Not to say the the effects budget was all that high, it was awfully low with plenty of painfully obvious miniatures blowing up in slow motion to make them look big. The goofiest effect has to be the full-sized robotic alien at the ending, which has lots of cool tubing and steam vents all over it but looked as though the crew had little or no control over it. When the alien first pops out of the woodwork it's legs dangle limply as though a crane is hoisting it up (and that's exactly what the crew probably used too).

To my knowledge, this is the only time Margheriti worked for Franco Gaudenzi, who usually worked fairly exclusively with Bruno Mattei. In comparison with most of Mattei similar work from the same period, this film seems almost classic. There's a fair amount of cheesy gore and horrendous acting. Co-star Robert Marius from AMERICAN COMMANDOS and COP GAME has to be the worst actor in the history of cinema. Aside from a pretty passive cameo by Charles Napier and Luciano Pigozzi wobbling around in his last role, the acting was all pretty uniformally hopeless. However, I don't see how this film earns the status as "Margheriti's worst film" even though it does flagrantly lift musical cues right out of Larry Cohen's Q - THE WINGED SERPENT. The film is exciting and action-packed enough so that it's never boring, and the finale isn't too big an ALIENS rip, with them using bulldozers instead of robotic lifters of course. Low budget in the extreme, but with enough amusing dialog and funny special effects to earn it a certain place in history. Not nearly as bad as Gaudenzi's other ALIENS ripoff produced the same year, SHOCKING DARK aka TERMINATOR II, which has to be an all new low.

Antonio Margheriti still is one of my favorite Italian directors (thanks to his 70's & 80's films), but the mix he presents us with "Alien From The Deep", he has done before and much better already. "Killer Fish" mixes a heist movie while cashing in on Joe Dante's "Piranha". With "Hunters of the Golden Cobra" he gave us a hero with James Bond allures in a film reminiscent of an Indiana Jones adventure. In a way, "Aliens From The Deep" fits in perfectly with all other blends of Margheriti entertainment. It's not on par with the films it borrows from, but it tries to redeem itself by going over the top a little further.

So what kind of blend does Margheriti present us this time? Obviously, the Italian title "Alien Degli Abissi" (which roughly translates to "Alien Of The Abyss") tries to cash in on James Cameron's 1989 hit "The Abyss". But that's where the comparison ends. Most of the film can be categorized as some type of 'adventure on a tropical island' film. Some military/governmental facility is dumping toxic waste into the earth. Some noble people try to expose this and ultimately stop them. Some action & some shooting. Fair enough.

Now what's with the alien-aspect of this film? Well, we have to wait a good 50 minutes for it to show itself, and it's not really an alien, but some mutant giant monster (basically formed by toxic waste, creating a symbiosis of organic material & scrap metal – I know, that sounds way too smart for a movie of this type) emerging from the bowels of the earth. It somewhat looks like a black giant crab-robot monster of sorts. It just gets thrown into the movie's third act so they could rip off the climax of Cameron's "Aliens". Remember Ripley fighting the mother-alien in that yellow robotic worker-unit? Well, it's here too, only it's some type of bulldozer.

So "Alien Degli Abissi" is just entertaining Margheriti nonsense (featuring yet again fun miniature effects) and nothing more. It's sub-par, as to be expected, but thankfully it's not boring. Oh, and it has Charles Napier running around in it, mainly behind computers. Other than that, he seems to have little else to do.

Good Badness? Yes, fair enough fun & inept action/adventure/monster fodder. 4/10 and 6/10.

I am and have always been a fan of Italian cinema, especially horror. The Italians used to be the masters of it but sadly that ended in the 1990's.

This late 80's monster feature tells the story of an evil cooporation dumping nuclear waste into a volcano on a secluded island. It's down to a reporter, her cameraman and a er.....snake expert to bring them down.

But of course things aren't that simple, we have to throw into the mix an alien monster creature....thing.

Starring the always excellent Charles Napier, this above average monster film is actually well made but suffers on levels you would naturally expect. From the questionable script to the views of the monster being so restricted Alien From The Deep was doomed from the start but manages to remain watchable regardless.

Not one of the many Italian masterpieces but a harmless fluff piece for fans of the genre.

The Good:

Charles Napier

SFX are above par

The Bad:

Some of the script is rather bad

Monster doesn't get enough real screentime

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

In order to strike their foes Snakes can jump 6ft vertically

A snake bite to the ankle will cause a wound in the knee

"Alien from the Deep" is dull and dragging a horror/Sci-Fi from the usually great and reliable Antonio Margheriti, who admittedly already had to be retired around the time of release.

Two young environmentalists venture to an island resort to battle against a chemical plant company that dumps its barrels of radioactive waste straight into an active volcano. You've got to admit that's a pretty clever type of shenanigans if you're a ruthless and power-greedy businessman! The two get caught, however, but the girl escapes into the island jungle and finds rescue in the arms of a lone snake farmer (what an awesome profession that must be) and together they attempt to stop the illegal dumping. But it's too late, unfortunately, as the years worth of industrial dumping spawned a hideous monster. You'll have to be very patient and tolerant if you want to see a monster or alien or menace of any kind. We're far beyond the 50 minutes mark until there's a bit of gore and at that same moment the director thankfully reminds us that this movie is actually supposed to revolve on a monster of any kind with the discovery of a giant claw. Luckily from then and onwards, the pacing remains steadily fast, the atmosphere becomes grimmer, the make- up effects are satisfying and even Charles Napier's supportive characters – which until then was a dull persona – becomes sleazier. Still, "Alien from the Deep" takes itself far too serious, what with all its environmentalist lessons, and even has a certain aura of pretension hanging around it. There are some nifty miniature settings to recreate the destructive sequences that cost too much to film with real equipment and the monster – when you eventually get to see it in all its glory near the very end – is quite a massive and reasonably admirable construction.

A cheap and cheezy sci-fi/horror clunker from director Antonio Margheriti, Alien From The Deep joins the select list of titles that have proved so tedious that they have taken me three successive nights to finish. Congratulations, Antonio!

The film stars sexy blonde Marina Giulia Cavalli as Jane, a Greenpeace activist who, along with her cameraman Lee (Robert Marius), sneaks onto a high security island where an unscrupulous corporation has been dumping radioactive waste into the heart of an active volcano, an irresponsible act that results in a stream of pure energy being emitted into space, much to the annoyance of an huge, ugly alien who comes to Earth and smashes stuff with its massive claw.

Judging by the amount of recycling that's going on here, Margheriti has clearly taken his film's ecological theme to heart: the director employs well-worn ideas from James Cameron's Aliens and The Abyss for his lousy script, while his monster looks like it has been constructed from old bits and pieces scavenged from a local junkyard. Antonio isn't wasteful when it comes to excitement or scares either, delivering very little of either, the action being repetitive and uninspired (lots of dreary running around the jungle and skulking around a factory) and the horror element almost non existent. The alien doesn't even make an appearance until about an hour in, and when it does show up, it's a massive disappointment, a poorly-conceived bio-mechanical being that looks like it's being wheeled around on a trolley before eventually rising to its feet where it wobbles uncertainly like a newborn baby deer.

This kind of trash usually tries to compensate for its many inadequacies with some splatter and nudity, but Alien From The Deep fails to satisfy in both departments, with only one decent moment of gore (a diver emerging from the sea with his face melted off) and Cavalli only going so far as stripping to her underwear Ripley-style, except that her vest is baggier and her panties are bigger.

2.5 out of 10, rounded up to 3 for IMDb.